An Easy Promotion Tool with Big Rewards

If you operate or own a website, then you know that you have to promote both on and off the web. You have to incorporate these two factors in order to be fully successful with an E-commerce business. I have talked with a few large Internet retailers that gave me an insight into their marketing on the web. When I was told, it all made sense and I had to implement it with my clients.

We all know that Ebay is the number one auction market place on the Internet today. Millions of dollars are spent each week on this web portal and it continues to grow each day! I am not going to tell you to open up a store and start selling your whole product line to Ebay buyers because that would be costly with little to no profit.

What I am going to tell you is to put a few top sellers in an auction, either fixed or auction type. This is to gain a large amount of viewers since the product is "hot" and they will want to purchase it. The key to this ploy is to put links on your auction site that direct viewers to your site that carries your whole product line. When this happens correctly your traffic will Explode and with all targeted viewers. You might not be making much money with the Ebay items that sell, but if you do it correctly the profit you make from these targeted viewers will far outweight the small profit margins. Give it a try because their is nothing to lose and you will be happy with the results.

Grayson is the current owner and operator of Overdrive Electronics and is certified for SE Optimization and online marketing techniques.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Grayson_Bell

The Sure-Fire Ways To Attract New Customers Now

1. Give Away An Electronic Information Product

The product could be a simple report posted on your Web site or autoresponder to a downloadable e-book. The information product should relate to your target audience. Just place your advertisement somewhere on the product. Allow other people to give away the information product to attract even more customers.

2. Offer Free Consulting Via E-mail

Allow potential customers to ask you specific questions relating to the subject of your business. Giving away free advice can show your prospects your expertise and give you instant credibility. Another benefit is when you e-mail them back the free advice or information include your signature file to get free advertising.

3. Hold A Free Chat Room Seminar

People go to seminars to learn about a particular subject. With chat rooms you don't need to fear public speaking or spend money to rent out a seminar room. You can use your own chat room or hold the seminar in someone elses. Holding a chat room seminar is an incredible way to get free publicity. Just send a press release to the media announcing your free seminar.

4. Start A Free-To-Join Club

Having people join your club is a creative way to attract new customers. People want to belong to something, why not your online club. The club should be related to your product or service. You could give away a free e-mail newsletter for club members only . Have a members only message board, e-mail discussion group or chat room. Post your advertisements on all the club information.

5. Provide Your Product Or Service For Almost Free

Tell potential customers you'll accept barter deals for your products or services. You may not be getting money but they will become your customers. If they are satisfied they might pay money the next time they make a purchase. Barter for things to improve your business or your own personal life.

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Julia Tang publishes "Smart Online Business Tips", a fresh
and informative newsletter dedicated to supporting people
like you. To find out the best online business opportunities,
to discover hundreds more proven and practical internet
marketing secrets, plus FREE internet marketing products
worth over $200, visit: http://www.best-internet-businesses.com
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Julia_Tang

Have you Manipulated your Keywords?

As we all know, correct targeted keywords bring us traffic to our websites. Many Internet Marketers follow a routine when creating new keyword based web pages.

It's quite simple:

First, pick a subject you'd like your keyword to be based on. To do this, there are several software programs available which can help you brainstorm a subject for your new website.

Second, Use a “Keyword Research Tool“ to collect as many relevant keywords for your theme/subject. There are numerous software applications which help you collect keywords. Some famous ones are:

• Keyword Discovery
• Wordtracker
• Keywords Analyzer
• Keyword Locator
• Keyword Elite
• Google’s own keyword suggestion tool
• Overture’s Keyword Research Tool

These software programs help you research, filter and collect thousands of keywords for your niche.
You need to make sure there are enough searches for your keyword to justify making a web page based on that keyword.

Once the keywords are collected, it’s imperative to clean your list and make it worthy of making web pages based on the keywords you collected in the previous step.

Keyword Controller is a new software program which cleans and manipulates you keyword list ready for generating many pages for your new website. It removes all characters which are not needed such as !&*.)”(-: and a lot more…

Once the keywords have been cleaned, it’s time to use those keywords to make appropriate web pages. The page url should include the same keyword which it is targeting. Keyword Controller helps you do that also.

Once you site is uploaded to your web host, it’s time to submit your sitemap (also generated by Keyword Controller) to Google and get your sitemap indexed and listed in the search engines.

Generally speaking, it takes between 2 days and 2 months to get your site indexed in the search engine listings.

Once your site is listed, you should start seeing a steady stream of visitors to your websites for keywords which have been cleaned and targeted properly.

Good Luck!

To learn more about this new keyword tool, visit http://www.keyword-controller.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amin_Sadak

Website Promotion Plan - A Key To Success Of A Site

By Sumit Sehghal

Website promotion plan totally depends on the objectives of the website that is a junction of three things such as business, Internet and customer. Website promotion plan is required to make an effective website. Best promotional plan helps you to get more traffic to your site but before implementing a plan you should be aware of all aspects of your website.

Owners should keep site’s general goals in mind at the time of selecting promotional plans. Website promotion plan is normally a combination of free and paid promotional ideas. Informational websites should always concentrate on free/very low cost promotional methods. You can easily promote your website with link exchange program. After placing links you should submit your site to various valuable directories. You should determine which directories are important for your industry.

You should also submit your site in some free directories to get traffic for your site. These free directories offer one-way links that usually enhance search engine ranking. Content is also another important concept of website promotion plan. You should concentrate on content of the site instead of graphics and images. Images can attract visitors but nice images with informational content attract a large number of visitors.

These entire steps take some time to implement but it will not take any more time to increase website traffic. Don’t think your work is finished after designing a website because you’ve to work regularly to keep your site up to date.

Author owns a website on Website Promotion Plan. Website offers useful information about website promotion plan, best website promotion plans, and also provides some tips on how to make a website promotion plan. You can get more information about site promotion plan

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sumit_Sehghal

Things To Keep In Mind When Choosing a Web Hosting Company

By Salil Pillai

When you are ready to start your journey into the web, you don't necessarily need the most expensive web hosting account you can find. A basic account should meet most of your start up needs. As you learn the kinds of things that you need, you will most likely be able to upgrade your account as necessary. If however, you have an e-commerce site, you may need slightly more complicated web hosting services. You need a company that can handle SSL technology and Payment Gateway Integration, for example. Moreover, if you choose a different service to handle your Payment Gateway Integration than you choose to handle your web hosting, you must ensure that both services can work cooperatively to take care of your business. Remember, the key to all of this is to make you money, so you want things that work well for your customers, and the best way to do that is for everything to work together seamlessly. To that end, the ideal web host has to have all the options right there.

Traditionally, the first thing you looked for was reliability, but over time, most hosting providers have managed to get their act together on that front to the point where anything less than 99% uptime is a disaster. The new first step in web hosting is choosing the kinds of things you need to keep your website running smoothly, such as what kind of server operating system that host uses, how much room to grow they give you with your hosting package, and what software they offer you to help your website do things.

Some web hosts offer tools such as an HTML/Scripting Editor, so you can design your website on the actual site, rather than having to get a designer to do it. These work with an extensive web editor that allows you to build and enhance your website right on the host server. Other tools might include something like Task Plus, a scheduling application that reminds you when you have a task due. You might also find your host offering you information resources, such as e-books, or perhaps a series of templates to use on your site, or even scripts that allow you to set up email forms and databases and testimonial rotators. For example, Flizard.com offers these, a total value of US$276, as part of their standard package.

Of course they, like most web hosts (but not all – you should check first), also offer our full customer service and support, but in this company’s case they also offer 1 hour of free website programming consulting every month, so you can call them up and tell them what you’d like your website to do, and they’ll tell you how it can be done. That’s pretty handy, especially if you’re a little new at the whole website game – in fact, it’s pretty darn rare.

At an absolute minimum, you need a company that gives you a number of basic things. First, you need unlimited FTP access. Second, you need web support that is available to you all of the time. Finally, you need some guarantee on your satisfaction. Some companies have a money back offer, others will work with you until you are happy. There are some additional features you might be able to find, such as a very low or free set-up fee, but while those can be tantalizing bait, what happens down the road when the honeymoon deal runs out and your costs suddenly spike?

Some offer web mail services. Some even offer web-based site administration capabilities. There are e-mail auto responding services with some companies. There are even virus protection policies with some companies, but ultimately we recommend using a company that will answer the phone when you have a question, because that’s the kind of personal one-on-one service that really turns into benefits for you down the road. That’s what makes the free web consulting offer mentioned above so special – it indicates a company that actually wants to talk to you, and that’s rare indeed.

Starting your journey to choosing the right web hosting company can seem a bit overwhelming, but making the right decision will make you very happy with your web site.

For more information on hosting contact http://www.flizard.com or phone Toll Free: 1-800-598-6934. Flizard is a Vancouver Web Hosting Company.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Salil_Pillai

Four Types of Web Hosting

Free Web Hosting Service

This is the most basic kind of Web hosting that you can get. Free Web hosting is typically advertisement-supported and offers limited features. This is the best option for those just starting out and only interested in hosting a small personal site that will be light on traffic.

Free Web hosts will give you a subdomain (yoursite.example.com) or a directory (www.example.com/~yoursite). They include a small amount of bandwidth and storage and tend to offer little to no support for MySQL, PHP, multiple e-mail addresses, and site statistics.

Shared Web Hosting Service

Shared hosting is the most popular kind of Web hosting service. Virtually all small businesses, medium to large Web sites, and professional sites see shared hosting as the perfect solution to their hosting needs. None of these entities require anywhere near all the resources of an entire Web server, not to mention the fact that it would be very costly for them to purchase and run one.

As the name suggests, shared Web hosts allow more than one site to be hosted on the same server. These hosts provide system administration, which is good for users that do not want to deal with the hassles of running a server along with a number of other users.

Although it depends on the specifics of the hosting plan, most server features will be readily available to the user, including PHP or ASP, MySQL, multiple e-mail addresses, and more bandwidth and storage than a free host. One downside is the possible security risks that are inherent with sharing a server with a number of other sites.

Dedicated Web Hosting – Unmanaged

This is a great option for users who want more bandwidth, storage, and other server features that free or shared hosting cannot offer. Having a dedicated server means that there are unlimited numbers of databases and e-mail addresses that the user can create, not to mention bigger bandwidth capabilities. Normal dedicated server plans give the user about 500 to 1,000GB of bandwidth per month, and if extra storage is required, a new hard drive can be purchased for the server.

For some users, the one big downside of having an unmanaged dedicated host is that you must be your own server administrator. If you do not know how to deal with this task, there are two options: learn about how to be a server administrator, or just go for the next Web hosting option.

Dedicated Web Hosting – Managed

So, if you want the big-time capabilities of a dedicated server but you do not want to deal with the hassle of learning about server administration, then this should be the perfect option for you.

Going this route means that you will have help in getting your server up and running, and you will have assistance readily available to you if something should ever go wrong. That being said, it is best to get a referral from a close and trustworthy person, or to at the very least do some diligent research on the Internet.

Pricing varies depending on how much reliability, security, and depth of support you want.

http://www.webhostingwonder.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_Hahn

Link exchange - A great way to enhance traffic

By Jakob Jelling
http://www.sitetube.com

Advertisement has always been the backbone of any company, situated anywhere across the globe. Advertisement is used from times in memorial just the way of advertising has kept on changing from time to time. And the easiest and fastest way known today is computers through use of internet. It has completely changed the whole advertising industry. Advertisement through internet has many advantages such as fast transmission, very economical, can reach anywhere across the globe in seconds and is reliable.

But with the increase use of these techniques internet traffic has increased rapidly in past few years. This slows down the speed of the website. But many companies have come up with a very easy and interesting solution. They have developed sites which have links to many quality sites. To become the member of the group you have to bring one link with yourself i.e. you have to bring one quality website with yourself and also have to make available few link slots for the existing members.

In return you get the links of other members so that you can use them for your benefit. Thus this can be termed as ‘link exchange’. The website which a person brings with himself is not added without immediately. But it is scanned thoroughly to check that it meets the quality standards of the company and if it doesn’t than you have to bring another one. The type of advertisements you want to send or receive entirely depends on you. You can go for the general category or can also go for some specific theme which you prefer the most.

The links once uploaded resides there permanently unless and until you or network chooses to remove it. If you are a beginner than it is advised that you choose to start with smaller number of links, the reason is that it’s better to add more links after than to remove old links. The links are added in simple HTML format so that it’s easy to upload and also its looks good. But you can always customize your link and choose your own format. Therefore the links you receive are also in simple HTML format.

You can also get bonus links for every new link you add, provided that the link you give gets approved by the company. The more variety you provide the more bonus you get. So it’s always better to add something unique. The most important point of these companies is that it’s absolutely free. All the stuff of all the websites is regularly checked to ensure that it’s real and not offensive. The set up is also very easy and even if you have any problem than it can be easily sorted out by the forum support provided by the company.

About the author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

Email advertising - How ad tracking helped create a killer ad

I recently undertook an email advertising promotion, using a number of advertising media. The exercise involved a program of mine called the Magical Marketing system.

As an email advertising Internet marketing exercise, I decided that I wanted to approach the members of some of the affiliate programs that are featured in Magical Marketing, and offer their members the chance to join this system, and reap the benefit of the multiple promotion methods that it employs.

And. as an email advertising marketing exercise, this has worked very well, and whilst an interesting exercise in Joint Venture Marketing in itself, it has produced a result so remarkable in my eyes, that I felt it worthy of a report.

With one particular featured program, I did a multiple ad test, to see what the comparison between three ads. It was the results of this that struck me, and prompted me to put this article together.

The three ads, which were very similar. This is good of course, because it means that any variance in the results can be explained in relatively few ways. So there are two points that need to be made about these ads, which may affect your thinking about how you write your own ads.

1. Use Of Variables in Headlines

I don't know about you, but I am always hearing that using someone's name in an advert can make a significant difference to the effect of that advert. Not all programs have this kind of facility though. It just happens the program that I ran the adverts with does, so I made use of it in the headlines for 2 of the 3 adverts, but not for one of them. I have used the variable in the body of all three ads, so some personalisation took place in all cases.

2. Bulleted Benefits

Again, all the books and articles that I have ever read tell you to spell out the benefits, and a lot of them tell you to bullet them to add emphasis. So, I have done this with all three adverts, but with a difference between ads 1, and 2 and 3. In the first advert, I just made single word references to the benefits, in the other two, I elaborated in order to explain the benefit better.

3. Conclusions

The results are so striking, that they are worthy of comment.

The ads were placed from 12th December 2004 to 18h January 2005. So, the time span is about a month, but, I use the program in question to send other ads out too. About every 3rd day, I will send one of these three ads, in rotation. So, each of the ads would have been sent about every 6 days or so.

Advert 1 pulled in 70 unique hits, with 19 action hits. The latter is where prospects followed through to the sign up page.

Advert 2 pulled 5 unique hits and 1 action hit.

Advert 3 pulled 4 unique hits and no action hits.

Headlines I have always advocated trying to keep headlines short, especially where email adverts are concerned. You only have the width of the email pane to enter your message, so you must tell your story within a few words.

I don't consider any of the Headlines that I have used to be excessively long. However, the first advert is very short, and perhaps that accounts in part for the huge number of additional clicks for the first advert?

In part, I believe that this is true.

However, I am now thinking that perhaps email prospects have become wary of seeing their name in emails from people that they don't really know. Think about how you react when you see such an email?

Do you open it immediately, or do you become suspicious?

Trust your gut feeling.

I have used the personalised approach in the body of the email, and maybe the psychology here is that once someone has opened an email, they have 'let you in' and are more amenable to your being personal.

Headline conclusion I am more convinced than ever that email headlines should be short - as short as possible. I also recommend that if you personalise the Headline, you stop, and test your ads without it.

Bulleted Benefits You can see that advert 1 has produced a massive amount of additional click thru's over the other two ads. Bearing in mind that each ad went out, probably every six days, the first two ads are not far removed from the norm with the program that I used. This makes the results achieved by Advert 1 even more staggering.

The change in headline may go some way to explain this, but the huge number of clicks tells me that something much more significant has occurred.

Thankfully, the body of the three ads are very similar in all aspects, except one; the bulleted benefits. In the first ad, I have given one word answers. In the other two, I have elaborated.

Bulleted benefits conclusion One cannot escape the fact that keeping the benefits so short has had an impact. And not only in click thru's either. If you look at the graphic under 'Actions' column, you will see that I have tracked the prospect through to the signup page. You might expect that the 20% conversion rate be the same, but it isn't, it has increased to around 28%. So the shorter bullet points have also pre-sold more effectively, so the prospects likelihood of signing up has increased as well.

As a final note, please remember that all of this is courtesy of tracking my ads. If you don't do it, then you will struggle to make an impact in the marketing world.

How to host several websites under one account

by: Mario Sanchez

If you operate several websites, each with its own domain name, signing up of separate ...hosting accounts can be an expensive proposition. Even if your hosting company offers the add-on domain feature (which will allow you to add different domains to the same hosting account) you will be charged a monthly fee for each domain you add, sometimes costing almost the same as your full hosting fee.

The solution is to open a reseller account. Reseller accounts were created to allow web designers to offer hosting services to their customers, to create a one-stop-shop for all their web design and hosting needs. However, you don't need to be a reseller to buy a reseller hosting plan.

Reseller accounts are usually slightly more expensive than regular hosting accounts, but they will allow you to host different domain names without incurring in the add-on domain fees, making more efficient use of your space and bandwidth.

You want to choose a reseller account that offers:

no limit to the number of domains you can add.
the possibility of hosting your main website free, without using any of the space and bandwidth in your hosting plan. If you are a reseller, your main website will be your business website, and the space and bandwidth will be reserved for your customers. If you are not a reseller and just want to manage different websites, you can designate one of your domains as your main website (usually the largest and/or most popular, since you won't accrue any space or bandwidth for it).
the possibility of upgrading to another plan without any penalties or fees.
To find out how much space and bandwidth you will need, first determine how many sites you are likely to host, how many pages each site may have, and how many visits will those sites most likely have. If you plan to host 10 sites with 20 pages each, at an average of 50KB per page and 100 page views per site per day, you will need 10MB of space (10 x 20 x 50KB) and 1.5GB of bandwidth per month (10 x 100 x 50KB x 30).

As far as pricing is concerned, there are reseller accounts costing as little as $10 / month up to several hundreds (or even thousands). It all depends on your requirements and the hosting company you choose, so shop around to get the best possible deal in terms of cost and reliability.

Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), an online collection of web design and Internet marketing articles and resources.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) - How to use it to Fight Email Forgery

By Joe Duchesne


Spam is a real problem today. Forged email is a big part of the spam problem. Have you ever received a spam email from yourself? How many times have you received an email you know to be spam from someone only to find out it came from an invalid email address? When you try to block the email by choosing block sender, the spammer simply changes the email address to another variation and gets through the block. Until recently, there wasn't much you could do about it. Now there is.

What is Sender Policy Framework (SPF)?

SPF makes it easy for a domain, whether it's an ISP, a business, or a school to say that they only send mail from certain machines. If any other machine is claiming to send mail, they are lying. SPF aims to prevent spammers from ruining other people's reputation. When your machine receives an email from another server that has implemented SPF, your machine can easily tell if the incoming email really comes from the server it says it belongs to. More information about SPF can be found at http://spf.pobox.com/

By implementing SPF in your favorite application or on your server, you can be sure that a spammer will never be able to impersonate you when spamming others. Most well known domains and email applications have already implemented SPF on their servers and products. Some examples of vendors that are already implementing SPF into their products include Sophos, Symantec, Declude Junkmail, Brightmail, IronPort, Ciphertrust, MailArmory, MailFrontier, Roaring Penguin Software, Communigate Pro, and others.

Ready to fight email forgery? Install applications that support SPF today and get protected from email forgery!


This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/, a web hosting company that specializes in helping online business owners increase their website traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely as long as you link back to my website from this resource box.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joe_Duchesne

Affordable Web Hosting - Important Tips to Consider Before Buying

By David J. Smith
Deciding on a web host can be a daunting task at first, but hopefully these tips will help you to find the best host to suit your requirements.

When choosing a web host you will need to find a company that has a good array of plans to suit a variety of requirements. Also you will need to find a host that allows plans to be upgraded easily with little to no downtime as your site grows and attracts more visitors. Initially when you have a new site to that you want to place online you may not know what resources the site will require, so there is little point in purchasing the best plan a host has on offer as you may be wasting hard earned money on services you may not need.

Ideally you should only pay for the plan that meets all your requirements initially, and as the requirements of your site grow you can then upgrade to higher priced plans, if you have chosen a good hosting provider this should be as simple as calling their sales department or sending an email to make the changes happen.

Personal Web Sites

Entry level hosting generally includes 100mb of storage space and up to 10GB of monthly data transfer (commonly known as bandwidth), this is usually enough for a personal web site or a small business web site. Entry level web hosting plans such as this are available for as little as $1.95 per month with no setup fees. If you have any plans in the future to host a lot of large images or video files and offer them for download, you should consider something more than what an entry level plan provides.

Other drawbacks of entry level hosting include a lack of database support, support for databases these days is essential for anything but static html sites, if you have plans of running a forum, photo gallery, shopping cart, or even a simple blog (web log), you will need hosting that supports databases. Most often the database required is MySQL due to the large amount of open source applications that use this type of database.

Business Web Sites

For a business, a host that supports databases is normally a must have feature and as such I recommend that for a business web site you choose a plan that support this feature, the cost of this feature is not a lot more, for $3-$7 a month your host can supply support for databases and a whole lot more. Most business plans will also include more storage space, more bandwidth, and other useful features such as shopping carts.

Another feature you should consider is email, for a business, multiple email addresses are becoming the norm, you may want each employee to have an email address for example, plus a few common email addresses such as "info@", "sales@" etc., the web hosting plans from $3-$7 a month generally support 100 to several thousand email addresses which should cover your needs well into the future.

Affordable Web Hosting Reviews at http://www.Webhost-Advisor.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_J._Smith

CHMOD - Undertanding File Permissions on a Unix-Based Server

By Joe Duchesne


The basic command for changing file permissions in unix based operating systems is the 'chmod' command. This command is executed with a set of parameters after it. With most FTP clients, you can simply select the filename you want to change the permissions of, right click, and choose the chmod command.

There are three main groups of permissions when dealing with the chmod command. The three groups are yourself or owner, your unix group, and everyone else. A typical chmod command would look like this - 'chmod 755' This allows you to add, remove or rename files as well as read or edit a file. It also specifies that your unix group and everyone else can only read and edit the file in question. They can't add, delete, or rename the file.

How the numbers in the chmod command work

There are three types of permissions that can be given to a file. They are read, write, and execute. The read permission is assigned a value of 4, the write permission is assigned a value of 2 and the execute permission is assigned a value of 1. So when a chmod command specified the digit 7 as the first number, it means that all three types of permissions are to be assigned to it. If a party is assigned a value of '0' then it means it has no rights whatsoever to a file. '6' tells the server that the user can read and write to the file but can't execute it. I think you get the idea.

Common permissions to set

Most of your html files will do fine with a permission of 644. Most script files will need a permission of 755. Any configuration files in a script package will often need a file permission of 777. Be very careful about assigning a file permission of '777' for everyone. With this permission, it means that anyone who gains access to your server will be able to add, remove, rename, read or edit the file. It is always a good idea with security in mind to assign the least amount of permissions necessary to get the job done.

An FTP client can keep things simple

Most people on shared servers will not have access to a command line to be able to use the chmod command. For most people, changing file permissions will be done through an FTP client. To do this, right click on the file you want to alter, and choose the chmod command. You will usually get a popup that will show nine checkboxes. The will be arranged in three rows. On the left you will usually see Read, Write, and Execute for the row headings. You can accomplish the same thing as typing in the numbers above by clicking on one, two or three boxes for each party. Once you're done, you click the apply or ok button and the file permissions will be changed.

If you keep in mind that you need to always go with the most restrictive file permissions possible that still allows your files to execute, and that there are three parties to define permissions for, you'll do fine. The three parties again are the owner, group, and everyone else.


This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/, a web hosting company that specializes in helping online business owners increase their website traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely as long as you link back to my website from this resource box.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joe_Duchesne

Build Your Own Online Network

By Mark Barnes


Many online business owners and marketers use a variety of tools to make their business successful. Good strategies include maintaining a web site, publishing an ezine, joining affiliate programs, advertising on other people's ezines, and much, much more. As any good Internet "guru" will tell you, getting your name and product "out there" is the most important part of your success. So, the general rule is: Use as many strategies as possible.

What I suggest is that you take this rule one step farther. What I think works best is combining as many of the strategies together, as possible. In other words, when you can, build your own network, using the tools you already have in place. And I'm using the word network, as it relates to networking your online systems -- not in the sense of a prospect or client network, though I have some tips on that, near the end of this article.

So, let's break down this concept. Suppose you have a web site that promotes a product or service. You probably have a sales letter, some testimonials and a merchant account, so people can buy your product. Now, what I would suggest next, if you don't already have it, is your own ezine (online magazine, operated by an e-mail autoresponder). You get visitors to subscribe to your ezine, using a pop-up or another type of FREE subscription form on your web site. Again, this may not be new to most people, but here's another spin on it. In addition to your pop-up or basic sign-up form on your site, why not add a page to your site, with a link on your home page, that does nothing but promote your ezine.

You see, many people pass up your subscription form, because they are afraid of SPAM, or they don't know enough about your ezine. Will it interest them? Or, will it just bombard them with more advertising?

A separate page can explain exactly what the ezine does, promote articles that you have in it, even give a sample issue, so prospects can see what they are getting. Be sure to have several subscription forms on this page between sections of your text, so people have plenty of opportunity to subscribe. Also, be sure that visitors are linked back to your home page, once they've subscribed, so they get back to looking at your product. Any good autoresponder will have this feature, which is crucial, because although you desperately want people signing up for your ezine, you also want them to read your sales letter and, hopefully, buy your product.

Make sure your ezine articles always link back to your web site, so you are constantly promoting yourself. After all, this is really what ezines are for.

Another part of good online networking is to set up affiliate programming, in a similar fashion to the aforementioned ezine promotion. That is, instead of just offering your own product as an affiliate program, set up a separate page on your web site for affiliate programs you use. So, you might have a link on your home/sales page called "Other Great Products." Obviously, you can use your own creativity for this title.

This link will take visitors to a site that promotes other products, for which you gain a commission as an affiliate. If you are unfamiliar with affiliate programs, visit ClickBank, the largest free affiliate program on the Internet. Most Internet marketers only offer their own product to people, who want to join affiliate programs, or they may offer just one other related product, with a link on their home page.

Plus, don't forget any other web sites of your own. Always be sure to link to them on all of your URLs and in your ezine articles. The key to building your own online network is to be sure you have promotional pages for all of your products and affiliates on your web sites and to link everything together. Remember, you want every visitor on your e-mail list, and you always want them landing back on your promotional pages.

One final thought. Promoting your business network offline is also critical to your success. Some basic techniques I use are:

• URL on return address stickers

• Business cards with ezine address and web site

• Fliers at community businesses and public places (be sure your community knows you above all others)

• Free seminars in regional communities, discussing my topic (remember, you don’t need to make money here – all you want is to get your name out there and to get e-mail addresses, so you can add them to your ezine list)

• Teach a class at a community college (get more e-mail addresses)

• Give free information away at community festivals, like Home Days

• Advertise in your local Money Saver magazines. It’s cheap, and it reaches tens of thousands of people, who love cheap or free stuff.

• Anything else you can think of that get people to your site and to your ezine

Stay positive. Building a network takes time and hard work, but it's well worth it in the end.


Mark Barnes is author of Winning the Mortgage Game and several other finance books. He is also publisher of Biz Sense Online and Let’s Talk Sports, weekly business and entertainment ezines. See Mark's work at www.winningthemortgagegame.com and www.bizsenseonline.com. To get Biz Sense Online, send a blank e-mail to bizsenseonline@getresponse.com

To get Let’s Talk Sports, send a blank e-mail to letstalksports@getresponse.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_Barnes

Sexy Business Women And More Great Business Keywords

By Tino Buntic


Creating a website for your business is easy but bringing visitors to the site is difficult. Too many business owners try too hard to get their site listed in search results for highly competitive keywords such as "business." Sure, over 1 million people search that word every month but there are over 1 billion websites that compete for that keyword. Sometimes it is just better to focus on a few dozen sets of keywords that have relatively little competition than to make a splash with one big keyword.

So here is a sample list of 25 keywords that receive hundreds of searches each month but have relatively little competition. Getting these onto page one of search results with Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask Jeeves should take less work than the more popular keywords.

Here is my sample list of keywords, in no particular order:

1. Sexy business woman: If this works for your site, great! Many men use the internet to search for pictures of women. Variations of this could include "nude business girls" or "naked business women." But be careful in drawing the wrong audience to your site.

2. Corporate sales lead: Great for sales prospecting companies that provide services such as sales lists or marketing lists.

3. Marquee widget: A widget is a hypothetical manufactured article but people still search for these.

4. Entrepreneurship skill: So many people want to start their own business and are researching anything to do with entrepreneurship.

5. Sales job opportunity: May be good to target in the springtime when kids are graduating from college and looking for jobs.

6. Free business proposal: Use the word "free" in any mix of words and the number of searchers increases. Everybody wants something for free (free money, maybe?)

7. Low Cost Advertising: A variation of "free" is "low cost."

8. Early stage venture capital: For those searchers looking for business capital.

9. B2B and B2C marketing tool: Business owners are always looking for ways to market their businesses. That's one of the reasons that books such as "Guerrilla Marketing" are so popular.

10. Business Connections: A good alternative for "business networking."

11. Good business start up: For the lazy searchers that can't come up with their own ideas for a business start up; they want others to tell them what a good start up would be.

12. Finance and banking: Take either of these two on its own and there is just way to much competition, but put them together and you got a chance.

13. Money market interest rate: More words that don't have a shot on their own.

14. Professional business attire: A good search for people that are preparing for a job interview.

15. Business networking tool: Business networking on its own is too competitive. But add another word such as "tool" to any competitive keyword and your results will be vastly improved.

16. Sales management resource: Sales management is too competitive. Once again, just add another word and the competition really decreases.

17. Customer service quote: I don’t know what this is but people still search it. I've heard of car insurance quote and mortgage rate quote, but not customer service quote.

18. Best small business: We all know that the best small business is one that is profitable, but who knows what else we’ll find if we search for "best small business."

19. Bad business ethics: This must have seen a jump during the highly publicized Enron scandal.

20. Business opportunity for women: A variation of this might be "business opportunity for the elderly"

21. Human resource job search: Job searching is always popular; just look at the success of Monster.com.

22. Consumer spending: Of course people are searching for this; everybody wants your money!

23. Money making secret: If their really was a secret, could the answer be found through a Google search? It can’t be that easy.

24. Strategic marketing consultant: I sure hope these consultants that charge exorbitant fees have strategies.

25. Free business sales lead: More free stuff!

Adding location specific words to your keywords also helps. Location specific words would include countries and cities such as U.S.A., Canada, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Dallas, Sacramento, Denver, Portland, Vancouver, Cleveland, and Seattle.

Of course, you must choose the right keyword mix that your target market is searching for. It would be useless to focus on people searching for "business sex" if your website is about trade shows, for example. If your visitors don’t find what they’re looking for they will quickly move on.


Tino Buntic owns TradePals. Low cost advertising is just one of many keywords he uses to bring visitors to his site. TradePals provides qualified sales leads without cold calling to business professionals, salespeople, trades people, freelancers, and entrepreneurs across North America.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tino_Buntic

Publicise your Website for Free

By Dan Moore


Breathe a sigh of relief - after much effort and work, your website has just gone live to the world. Now all you need is people to view it! Many companies think that the work ends when their website is launched, but this should be just the start of a prolonged campaign to make your site work for your visitors, and get visitors to your site.

Here are some ideas on how you can market your site and drive traffic to your site, without spending large sums of money:

Search Engine Submission

The place to start is by submitting your website to all the major search engines - this can be done for free, and quickly and easily. There will be an 'add site' link where you just type in the URL of your site and it will be added to the list of sites for that spider to crawl.

You need to be patient as it can take a long time to get listed and so traffic may be slow at first. You can help harbour traffic during this period using the following methods.

Link Exchange

If you can find similar sites then suggest swapping sites with them - this way you build a network of links to your site and back to other relevant sites, which means visitors to those other sites have a chance of finding yours, too.

Article Repositories

There are many article repositories out there on the internet, and if you have something to say you can write an article and then link it back to your site; and list the article on many article repositories. If the audience of those sites like what they see, then of course they may well come through to your site as a warm lead.

Word of Mouth

Many people forget about word of mouth advertising, but this can be excellent for the smaller business - tell friends, family and customers about your site and they may well pass on the information to their friends and family, and so on. Don't forget it!

Company Stationery and Emails

Ensure that when you launch your site all company stationery is updated to include the web address. Ensure that business cards also list the website and of course that your emails contain a link back to your website in their footer. This is free marketing so you should ensure that you don't miss out on this important opportunity to advertise!

Competitions

Another great way to get traffic is to use the age old trick of a competition or survey where there is a prize to be won for answering some questions. Use this as a great way to get many people familiar with your site by asking a question related to some aspect of your site. Those that enter the competition will at least be aware of your site, and may well come back in the future to place orders for your merchandise!

Dan Moore is Director of Clarity Media Limited, a web design company and puzzle supplier of such smash hit puzzles as sudoku, kakuro, hanjie and codewords

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_Moore

Boost Your Business With Free Web Promotion

By Aurel Radulescu


Whether you are starting a new business or operating on a budget, you cannot go wrong with free web promotion. The truth is that not everyone has an expense account to justify an aggressive advertising campaign. Many businesses, especially web-based, outline marketing as their largest expense. However, free web promotion has changed the way that everyone looks at advertising.

The best way to gain free web promotion is through the use of press releases, which highlight upcoming news, events and headlines regarding your company. In order to write an effective press release, your business must be involved in something noteworthy. Whether it be a contest, a grand opening, a special sale or other event, a press release is the perfect way to advertise your business happenings for free. There are a number of press release submission websites, which allow business owners to submit their news for free. In addition, submitting your press release to newspaper and magazine editors may increase your chances of being published both online and in print. Before sending a press release, which should be no more than one page in length, make sure that your name, mailing address and telephone number is included at the top of the page. Many editors require that contact information be present before they will even consider publishing a press release. The reasoning behind this is to confirm the identity of the person submitting the news.

Web promotion can perhaps best be utilized through successful positioning on internet search engines. By making sure that your website content is rich with information, links and updated information, search engines will be more likely to position your site among the top ranks. In addition, a descriptive website will also find it’s way to the top. For example, if your business deals with collectibles, make sure that your content is rich in keywords dealing with collectibles and the product line that you offer. Avoid stuffing keywords, but make sure that your website clearly indicates it’s subject matter.

One of the best avenues for web promotion is through article marketing. While many website owners are still somewhat unfamiliar with this approach, others are cashing in on a surge of traffic generated from properly marketing their articles. The key to successful web promotion via article marketing is to write an informative article that everyone will want to read. At the bottom of the article, include a brief paragraph featuring your name, the name of your business and a website address. The next step is to submit your article to as many article directories as possible. The more exposure, the better. As other webmasters log on to article directories in search of content for their website, they may select your article to be featured on their site. The more webmasters that feature your work, the more free web promotion your business will receive.

There are a number of ways to acquire paid marketing opportunities and an equal, or greater, number of ways to get free web promotion. If done correctly, web promotion doesn’t have to empty the entire expense account. In some cases, it won’t even cost you a cent.

For better search engines ranking and permanent back links you can also submit your web sites to AgoraFind.com web directory, AllFinancialSites.com finance directory and AllLawSites.com law directory.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Aurel_Radulescu

Create a Google Sitemap for Your Web Site

By Herman Drost

Google Sitemaps is a simple and fast way for your site to be constantly indexed and updated by Google.

This article will discuss the benefits of implementing this new technology, who should use it, how it works and how to create a Google Sitemap for your web site.

Benefits of having a Google Site Map

1. Speeds up the discovery and addition of your web pages in the Google index.

2. Enables Google to quickly find web pages that have been recently changed.

3. A method for your site to be listed and appear quickly in Google.

4. Helps Google to keep search content fresh, so people have the most up to date information available.

Who should use Google Sitemaps?

All site owners can use Google sitemaps whether you have one page or millions of pages, however it's mostly geared towards people that make frequent changes to their web pages.

Normally web pages on a large site will not all get indexed because the links are too deep within the site. By including all your pages in the Google Sitemap you have a better chance of them all being indexed as Google thrives on fresh content. According to Google, it won't increase your site's rankings.

How does it work?

Google sitemaps are created using XML (Extensible Markup Language). This is a coding language similar to HTML(though a little more complex). It is often used these days in syndicated feeds or blogs.

Here is the sample XML code you would include for each page of your site:

<.url><.br> <.loc>http://www.yoursite.com/<./loc>
<.lastmod>2005-07-15
<.changefreq>monthly<./changefreq>
<.priority>0.5<./priority>
<./url>

(remove periods for code to work)

Here is a breakdown of what each line represents:

location - name of your webpage ie http://www.yoursite.com

last modified - when you last modified the page.

change frequency - tells Google how often you modify that particular page, whether it's never, weekly, daily, hourly, monthly or yearly.

priority - sets the priority you want Google to place for that page on your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the least, 1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the middle.

This is only relative to your site. It will not affect your rankings. Certain pages on your site may have more significance than others because they are updated more often ie home page, articles page.

How to Create a Dynamic Google SiteMap XML File

It would take a long time to create your Google Sitemap by hand especially if you have a site that contains 1000s of pages.

Fortunately Google provides the Sitemap Generator that allows you to generate a sitemap very quickly. It's a Python script that creates a Sitemap for your site using the Sitemap Protocol. This script can create Sitemaps from URL lists, web server directories, or from access logs.

You can read more about it here:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Other Sitemap Generators.

Google has also compiled a list of third party generators.

Personally I use the free sitemap generator It's simple to use and quickly produces the necessary XML code for your site.

Here are the steps on how to create your Sitemap using this free Sitemap Generator:

1. Go to http://www.sitemapspal.com and enter your site's address.
2. Copy the code that it generates for your site and paste it into notepad.
3. Save the text file as sitemap.xml
4. Upload this file to the root directory (same place as your home page) of your web server.
5. Open up a Google Site Map account and submit your site's address.
6. Every time you modify a page or pages, login to your Google account and click on the resubmit button.
7. Repeat this procedure for all of your web sites.

Conclusion

Google is still the largest and most accessed search engine on Net. Each year millions of web sites get added to Google making your site harder to find. Creating a Google Sitemap will help your web pages stay fresh in Google's index.


Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com. Affordable Web Site Design and Web Hosting. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Herman_Drost

Free Web Site Traffic - 4 Keys to Website Promotion

By Tammy Ames

eb site traffic promotion on the cheap is labor intensive but quickly mastered if you know where to start. Free web site traffic doesn’t mean massive submission to search engines or traffic exchanges. Carving out a web site promotion strategy following basic guidelines will bring the targeted web site traffic you need to have a successful online business.

Keys to web site promotion

Search engine optimization (SEO)

The first step to online web site promotion is ensuring that your web site is optimized for search engine traffic. Every page of your website needs to be worked with strong targeted page titles, heading tags and original content rich with key words chosen to reach your niche market. If you are a self-directed learner then your best bet would be Jill Whalen’s Nitty Gritty of Writing for Search Engines. http://www.wahmconnections.com/nittygritty.htm

If you need more support and would prefer learning search engine optimization in a classroom format then I recommend Cricket Bailey’s SEO class found at GNC Web Creations. http://www.gnc-web-creations.com

Ezine (Online Newsletter) Publishing

Newsletter publishing is a powerful way to stay connected to visitors to your website and help generate repeat traffic to your online business. By creating fresh content and strong readership, your newsletter will be forwarded to others leading to a growing subscriber list. Strong design and subscriber interaction, a newsletter will generate regular traffic that over time will build your credibility and name recognition ~ Branding.

Business Blog

Blogging for online business is quickly becoming one of the best web site traffic generators you can find that doesn’t have to cost you anything. You invest your time learning how blogging works for business then you set up your blog and start using the information you have learned to generate targeted traffic to your website. The most popular free online blogger is Blogger.com which although is owned by Google does not have any extra perks for search engine traffic generation and the initial traffic you draw is to someone else’s site ~ Blogger.

If you have your own website that you have control of your c-panel then check to see if you have Fantastico which allows you to set up your own blog. If you set up your new blog within your own website then your blog is essentially free unless you need to upgrade your hosting to accommodate the increase in bandwidth used with higher traffic but that is a good thing!

A blog with strong titles, quality content and strategic pinging plus rss feeds will be your key to fast search engine indexing, traffic to your blog that can funnel traffic directly to your business website.

Article Writing

Writing articles with a strong resource box is your best free web site traffic generator. Due to its viral nature on the internet, articles that are published on websites and in newsletters of other ezine publishers will bring your website traffic. With each new article and publishing, your articles will reach more people building both traffic and branding You as an expert. With each article you write, your first stop is EzineArticles which is a high traffic article database used by webmasters and newsletter publishers to find fresh content. EzineArticles (http://www.ezinearticles.com) also publishes your articles in a search engine friendly format that lets internet surfers find the information they are seeking.

Every business website owner should take these keys to web site traffic seriously. The energy put into learning SEO, newsletter publishing, business blogging and article writing has a high return on investment.

Creating fresh dynamic articles in your area of interest and expertise will help you build up your website, fill your newsletter and draw traffic to your business blog. Submitting your articles to other webmasters and ezine publishers will further build your reputation beyond your own website.

Learning how to write and publish your articles on your website and your blog in a search engine friendly format means that you have covered all the bases.

Free web site traffic is initially very labor intensive but the investment of yourself in these four areas will bring you the success online you are striving to achieve.

Tammy Ames is the owner of WAHM Connections http://www.wahmconnections.com - Building your home internet business resource site with a weekly online newsletter Work at Home Connections Ezine http://www.wahmconnections.com/current.htm

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tammy_Ames

Latest Website Promotion Ideas

By Steve Hill

I have written articles about website promotion in the past, however things on the internet are always changing and my opinions have now changed. This article is all about my new website promotion ideas, ideas which I use on my all of websites.

A good linking campaign is the main priority. Attempting to increase the number of backward links you have pointing to your website is essential. However you have to be careful. Here is a list of do's and do not's.

Do:

Increase the number of backward links pointing to your website slowly

Obtain backward links from within the same industry/market as your own

Build up the number of one-way links your website has pointing to it

Write articles and submit them to article directories

Add your website domain on all of your adverts, documentation and e-mails

Offer the visitors to your site the chance to sign up to a monthly newsletter

Offer the visitors to your site a free e-book

Write press releases

Do not:

Join a link building website to automate your linking requirements. These are tempting to join however are frowned upon by the search engines. Always remember hard work pays off.

Increase the number of backward links to quickly

Purchase too many link text ads

Just leave your website without any promotion, it will not grow on its own

Build hidden pages

In my opinion one-way links are vital. These are the most powerful form of backward link and the search engines love them. I can see no way in which they can penalise a site that is only acquiring these type of links.

The best and easiest way of obtaining these one-way links is by writing articles like the one you are reading. Once you have written the article, you then need to submit it to a number of article directories. You are able to add a link to your website on the bottom of the article and the hope is that other webmasters will want to include your article on their website, thus giving you a one-way link.

I have been writing articles for around a year and I must say it has done wonders for my businesses. The number of visitors to my sites have rocketed and the page rank have also steadily increased.

I hope you have found this article interesting to read and beneficial to you.

Good luck with your website promotion campaign

Stephen Hill has a number of websites including:

manual article submission service

anti aging website

debt reduction information

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Hill

Does Website Hosting Affect Rankings At Google?

Author: Nakul Goyal

After planning and developing a website the next part is to host it on the internet. Web Hosting is indeed an issue to be spent time on but the question arises if you need to look at it with your SEO eye or not? The issue of ‘Web Hosting’ is not just related to the price and features of web hosting provider offered but website owners who are far sighted consider some other factors too and one of those factors is search engine optimization.

Does choosing a host provider makes any difference in rankings at search engines. If you submit your site again and again to Google but still isn’t able to get it indexed then you must give a thought to your host provider who may be responsible. There is a strong belief that a website to rank higher must have a unique IP address but on the other hand it doesn’t seem necessary because these days most of the websites are hosted on shared IP’s. On a single computer many servers run side by side and serve different domains from single IP’s.


If you look at any of those SEO forums, you will see several topics old and new trying to talk about web hosting concerns as well as name servers issues!! The question people have in mind is “A ‘cheap’ web hosting company hosts my site but, by the price of it, also may be hosting numerous spammers, scam sites, or other banned sites like Gambling and or Porn. (But for less then $10 per month they'll give you 5000 MB and unlimited domains!). Does that affect my rank and does it risk my website?

The answer in plain words is Yes and No. It may affect you to some extent and No it may not affect you in other concerns. Read in detail below.

Well there are certain situations like if the domain sharing your server and IP is penalized by Google on account of spamming then your website is also expected to be banned or penalized. Another situation can be that your website is residing on the server containing illegal adult content, and that site too is on the hit list of Google resulting in your website to be banned too. But it is never taken for granted that if such co incidence happens then your website is surely affected because it is common sense that for a mistake by one person another one cannot be punished. Still to be on the safer side certain points should be made clear while hiring a web host.

Host should be 24/7 up: For proper website services it must be up 100% of time so that users aren’t encountered with blank page at times. Similarly search engines have no specific timings to come to a website for crawling so it must be up at all times in order to make search engines happy. If googlebot encounters a 404 error it will come again in the next crawl, so to be on the safer side ensure 100% uptime of your site. Yes maintenance tasks all hosts do but they should inform well in advance that for such and such period the site will be down due to maintenance so that you can plan accordingly but on the other hand if your host doesn’t inform you and you browse your site to see a 404 error then you must consider moving to another one. Google is believed to have a smaller crawl daily and a deep crawl once a month which implies that googlebot can come anytime. So your website must be ready to receive this welcome guest.

Clean record: The record of the host should be good at Google, although there is no mechanism to know about it but web hosts that are very popular and extensively used by big websites could be trusted rather than unpopular ones. Have a look at http://support.easystreet.com/abuse/banned_ip.html. For example a host hypermart.com offers very good and reasonable packages of hosting for general as well as dedicated hosting but a website hosted on it could face problems with optimizing at Altavista because this host service has got banned by Altavista and miss the traffic coming from this popular search engine. But such cases are rare and in a nutshell look for the prominent and reputable names in this field.

Virtual shared IP’s: Virtual shared IP is a system by which a web server uses the same IP address for different domains. Instead of having new computer for a server multiple virtual servers are made to reside on the same computer. Some web hosts can host 2000 domains on a single IP address; it all depends on the processing power and resources available to the server and the quality of service that the host wishes to provide to its clients. In this case the web page feed to the search engines would be very slow. However these days virtual shared hosting is a common scene as being a cheap and reliable option and mostly accepted by engines especially Google. Google does not ban sites by virtue of their sharing an IP address with a misbehaving site. In the words of Craig Silverstein of Google at an interview “Actually, Google handles virtually hosted domains and their links just the same as domains on unique IP addresses. If your ISP does virtual hosting correctly, you'll never see a difference between the two cases. We do see a small percentage of ISPs every month that misconfigure their virtual hosting, which might account for this persistent misperception”. This makes it quite clear that Google does not penalize a site on account of virtual hosting if it is configured the proper way.

URL restructuring: With web hosting maintaining the proper structure of your URL’s is also important, search engines face problems while indexing dynamic URL’s (URL’s having many parameters or long query strings). Google is considered to be happy only with one or two parameters and more of the parameters the more it will be difficult to index them. Try to convert your dynamic pages to static ones, or let the server do it for you the other way to reduce the number of parameters passed in the URL which will help the page to be indexed fast. Apache is the most popular web server and employs a special “rewrite” module that allows you to convert the dynamic long URL’s to search engine friendly web addresses, this module (mod_rewrite) is not installed by default on the server but many hosting companies install it additionally being very easy. Ensure that your host has this module working to enjoy the benefits.

Hosting does not matter that much although certain exceptions are always there i.e some host is penalized by Google but that way Google is intelligent in its operations and cannot deploy it unless compelled to do so. It is preferable to look for individual IP address so that risk of index removal is minimized. An expert advice can always save your time and money a great deal that is very precious which otherwise you learn by experience. Another thing that can be inferred is that sites hosted by free web hosts aren’t expected to rank high in future at Google for most competitive keywords because of the obvious reason that free sites are mostly prone to depleted content. In a nutshell you must be thorough with your web host and always clarify all issues before selecting one. These small considerations can make you safe for your further plans towards search engine optimization.

About The Author
A Master of Sciences in IT from Panjab University , Chandigarh and a Bachelor of Computer Applications from Punjab Technical University , Jalandhar , India . He is passionate towards the Cyber World & he likes to write about Technology. He's a Microsoft Certified Professional, a Brainbench Certified 'MVP' (Most Valuable Professional), Brainbench Certified Internet professional and a CIW (Certified Internet Webmaster) Associate.
Website: www.nakulgoyal.com
Email: nakul@nakulgoyal.com

Win with Google AdWords - Part 2

Part 2

Most businesses want a cost-effective way to bring in more customers. The challenge is to find prospects who are thinking about your products at the exact time that you reach them.

This article is a continued from Part 1 here: forums.webhostdir.com/showthread.php?t=14748

Choose Your Keywords
As I mentioned earlier, it is important to pick good keywords. Initially, choose both general keywords and narrowly targeted keywords, and carefully evaluate the results. Keep keywords that are getting you results, and remove keywords that are not working for you. You will probably need to run your campaigns for a while before you will have enough information to determine which keywords are succeeding for you.

In the keyword space provided in the setup process, list the keywords or keyword phrases you would like to use. Because people tend to type fast when they search the web, be sure to include common mis-spellings of your keywords. Here are some example keywords that our fictional coffee roaster might use:

coffee
coffe
shade grown coffee
shade grown coffe
shade grown
shade coffee
coffee shade grown
shade grown coffee migratory birds
benefits of shade grown coffee
gourmet coffee
gourmet coffee beans
gourmet coffees
coffee beans
gourmet coffee beans
organic coffee
organic coffee beans
certified organic coffee
coffee beans organic
mail order organic coffee
bulk coffee

To get more keywords enter a keyword into the Keyword Tool Box and click on Get More Keywords. This will generate additional keywords, some of which will be relevant to you and some of which will not be relevant. Keep the relevant keywords and toss the rest.

Now, you have a good starting list. Later, you will want to add new keywords, and remove non-performing keywords. A good keyword is one that yields you conversions into customers or good leads.

Google Search versus Google Content Network
Google AdWords can place your add in essentially two places: Google search and the content network. Google search are results from searches that prospective customers do directly using www.google.com. The content network consists of Google partner sites and sites that run advertisements through Google’s AdSense program.

In my experience, Google search has yielded much more quality clicks than the content network. The content network is worth trying but I recommend putting it into a separate campaign so you can measure its results against your Google search campaign.

The content network is opt-out, and is not possible to opt-out during the setup process. However, to opt-out of the content network for a specific campaign, you can go back to campaign settings and uncheck the checkbox for content network.

Then setup a separate campaign where you focus on the content network and opt-out of the search network. Compare the results between the two campaigns. It is possible that you will find Google search is more productive than the content network but, of course, your results may be different from mine.
If you want to keep it simple until you are more comfortable with AdWords, I recommend starting with just the search network. Then come back in a few weeks and setup a separate campaign to try the content network, and compare the results to what you are getting with the search network.

Your Daily Budget
Your daily budget for your campaign is the ceiling on your daily spending. You can set this number at whatever you want. It is a good idea to start out with a relatively low daily budget while you refine your AdWords effectiveness. As your ad campaigns succeed and bring you more business, you will likely want to increase your budget.

Start with a daily budget of about $10 to $15 per day and gradually increase that amount as you fine-tune your approach.

Your Bid
In addition to your daily budget, you will need to set a maximum bid that you are willing to pay as a Cost Per Click (CPC). This require some trial and error to get right. Being the highest bidder is not really what that you want. Instead, you want to get the most quality clicks you can for your budget. If you bid too high, your CPC will be too high and will eat up your budget too fast; if you bid to low you will not get enough clicks and hence enough sales.

You might try starting with a bid of $2.50, and see what happens for a day or two. Then gradually raise or lower the bid, depending on results. If clicks consume your daily budget in a couple of hours, then lower your bid. If the advertisements are not getting many clicks, then raise your bid. Continue this process until you find the optimal bid.

Leads and Sales
What if visitors are clicking on your ad but are not buying or contacting you? That likely means your ad is working but your website or landing page is not persuading prospective customers to take the next step. It can also mean that your product or service needs some work to become more competitive. Compare what you are offering to your competitors.

The simplest things can make a dramatic difference. When your landing page is not getting you conversions, change one thing and see what happens over the next day or two. That way, you can determine which changes work. Do not be afraid to try possible solutions, knowing that some changes will fail and some will work well.

Recently, one of our landing pages was not getting enough conversions so I made some minor changes to the wording on the page and conversions started going up the next day. On another page, we replaced our very simple order form with a much more elaborate version. Our sales for that service immediately plummeted. We simply changed the order form back to the simpler version and sales picked up again immediately.

Harvesting From the Money Tree
The Google AdWords money tree is now planted, optimized, and working to bring you leads and sales. What do you do now? Harvest it, of course, by solid follow-through and providing the best possible service for your clients.

Go back from time to time, and take a look at your results. Make adjustments to your budget and bids as needed. Write another advertisement that takes a slightly different tact. Remove an ad that is not producing high quality clicks for you. Make some improvements to your website to see if you can increase your conversion rate.

Practice Kaizen – a Japanese word for continuous, incremental improvement. Even if your Google AdWords money tree is providing good yields, there are always ways to improve its performance.
So pour yourself a cup of good coffee, and get started using Google AdWords today!

About the Author
Neil Anuskiewicz is the Marketing Manager for EZ Publishing. The firm specializes in helping businesses harness the power of the Internet for marketing and to automate business processes.

By Neil Anuskiewicz - www.ezpublishing.com
Neil has been in the Internet technology industry for 10 years. He has a passion for learning, and reads two business books each month. He also enjoys writing useful articles for small business people.
Please email questions or comments to Neil at articles@ezpublishing.com.

Win with Google AdWords - Part 1

Part 1

Most businesses want a cost-effective way to bring in more customers. The challenge is to find prospects who are thinking about your products at the exact time that you reach them.

With the advent of Google AdWords, it is now possible to target prospects at the very moment they are thinking about buying your products or services. If someone does a Google search on digital cameras, they only see ads for digital cameras. If someone does a search on organically grown coffee beans, they only see ads for organically grown coffee. Google AdWords enables you to implement precisely targeted advertising.

With proper preparation and execution, starting Google AdWords can be like planting a money tree that will provide your business with a steady stream of revenue.

What is Google AdWords?
Open up a Web browser and go to the Google website. Type in the search term coffee and click search. Essentially, two types of search results come up: on the left and below are the organic search results that nobody has sponsored. On the right side of your browser window and sometimes above the organic results are the Sponsored Links. The Sponsored Links are paid advertisements. Sponsored links are always identified as such by the heading Sponsored Links.

As participants in this automated auction, each of these advertisers is bidding for the keyword coffee. They only pay if someone is interested enough to click on the advertisement; if nobody clicks on the ad, the cost is zero. The higher the advertiser bids on a keyword, the higher in the rankings the ad appears and the more likely web searchers will see it. Ranking means visibility, though you do not have to be at the top of the rankings or bid the highest amount for prospects to see your ad and click on it. Your goal is to get the lowest Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and the highest quality clicks (sales and leads) for your budget.

Find your Niche
Sometimes with popular keywords (e.g., coffee) there are many companies competing. On the other hand, popular keywords get millions of searches so there might be enough clicks to go around. The only way to find out if a particular keyword will work for you is to try it. The problem is that many other advertisers are bidding for the popular keywords so your CPC is likely to be high. You are more likely to get a low CPC with more obscure, highly targeted keywords. It will take some thought to come up with the right keywords.

Our coffee roaster would probably want to try the keyword coffee, and watch it like a hawk as it could result in many low quality clicks (not many conversions to leads or sales). If a keyword does not produce high quality clicks after a reasonable trial period (a couple weeks), then remove it; it may even be obvious sooner that a particular keyword is costing money but not producing results.

Perhaps our coffee roaster sells shade-grown coffee that protects Central American songbird habitat. While far less people are searching for shade grown coffee than just coffee, it is likely to yield a lower CPC and higher quality clicks.

Getting Started
The first thing you need to get started with AdWords is a goal. Is your goal to make direct sales via e-commerce on your website? Is your goal to capture sales leads that you can follow-up with and make the sale? Alternatively, is your goal a combination of both of these outcomes? Once you have determined a goal you need a website that helps you achieve that goal.

Your website should be eye-catching and well organized, and include landing pages for your products or services. To see some examples of landing pages, do a search for your services, and look at what other companies in your market are doing. The landing page can be your main website if your website tightly focuses on one product or service you are advertising (e.g., this permission-based email marketing website). Otherwise, the landing page should be a page within your larger website that focuses on the specific product or service you are advertising.

If you want sales leads, then your site should include a call to action to persuade people to request more information. The way they submit a lead is to click on a link to a lead capture form. You need a form that at a minimum sends you—or the appropriate sales staff—an email but ideally should also create a lead for you in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system such as SalesForce or SugarCRM.
Whether you are selling directly from your website or capturing leads, your website should always have obvious ways to contact you using whatever method the prospect feels most comfortable using: a contact form, email, or telephone. Some company websites make it hard to figure out how to contact them for more information.

It is important to have a number of people – both inside and outside of your company – test your website for usability and ease of use. Prospects should never have to wonder how to buy from you or how to contact you to ask a question about your products or services.

Sign-up for Google AdWords
Once you have a goal, website, and landing page, you are ready to sign up for Google Adwords Learn by doing. It is easier to write the advertisement and select keywords using the tools that Google provides during the sign up process. In addition, some Web hosting providers have collaborated with Google, and can offer you a free AdWords coupon to get you started.

If you plan to spend at least $30/day on AdWords, Google offers a JumpStart program to help you get started using AdWords. Google JumpStart specialists will help you create a campaign. The cost of the program is $299 but Google will apply that as a credit toward the cost of your initial clicks. Not having used JumpStart myself, I cannot vouch for its quality though Google generally offers high quality services.

Campaigns and Ad Groups
The Campaign level is where you set your daily budget, language targeting, location targeting, ad distribution preferences, and the start and end dates for your campaigns (if applicable).

The Ad Group level is where enter your keywords and the advertisements themselves. Each Ad Group has one or more ads. Write at least two ads for each ad group so you can try different approaches and compare the results.

In my experience, it has been beneficial to create multiple campaigns so I can experiment with different parameters and compare the results. Campaigns that work well I keep; campaigns that do not work well, I delete.

Targeting
Choose the language you want to target, and then the countries or territories. This requires some thought. Can you offer your product or service globally, in just the United States, or in just your city or region? You can target your campaign to the world or to specific countries, regions, states, or cities.

For even more precise targeting, you can even target your campaign to a certain number of miles from your business or even an area bounded by coordinates.

Google Analytics
In the fictional advertisement examples I gave, you may have noticed the codes in the destination URL’s: “coff1” and “coff2”. These are tracking codes that facilitate the tracking of a wealth of information by Google Analytics.

Google Analytics, which Google integrated with AdWords, is a very powerful service for tracking the success of both your organic and paid search results for your website. It will help you better understand your website visitors experience in detail. In addition, you can learn what keywords bring in the best prospects, and which of your campaigns are delivering the best return on investment. You can use Google Analytics to track marketing campaigns other than AdWords as well.

Google Analytics is too big a topic to cover much here but I will devote a future article entirely to this powerful marketing tracking service.

This article is continued in Part 2 here

by Neil Anuskiewicz - www.ezpublishing.com

About the Author
Neil Anuskiewicz is the Marketing Manager for EZ Publishing. The firm specializes in helping businesses harness the power of the Internet for marketing and to automate business processes.

Neil has been in the Internet technology industry for 10 years. He has a passion for learning, and reads two business books each month. He also enjoys writing useful articles for small business people.
Please email questions or comments to Neil at articles@ezpublishing.com.

Important considerations before choosing a web hosting provider

The first thing before choosing a web hosting provider is that you should be fully aware of your hosting requirements. If you are a beginner wanting to host a personal web site, then your only concern is that you get a decent amount of disk space for your web site with a host that is as cheap as $5 per month. However, if you are a developer, an online entrepreneur or an online business looking for e-commerce capabilities or advanced scripting technologies, then you can determine your requirements in the following order.

(1) Whether you need Shared Hosting or Dedicated Hosting:
This depends mainly on two major requirements, the traffic your web site is expected to receive and the degree of administrative privileges you need. If you expect your web site to receive huge amounts of traffic, then you will need to have a Dedicated Server which definitely has a much greater bandwidth offering. Also you should select Dedicated server hosting if your web site requires customized options, secure information or complex applications i.e. e-commerce, dynamic content, database and multimedia applications.

(2) Whether you need Linux Hosting or Windows Hosting:
If you're going to use server technologies such as ASP, JSP etc or intend to run Microsoft applications like Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL database on your server, then you should use a Windows hosting provider. Although ASP can be run on the Linux platform using some commercial applications, there are security and reliability concerns related to it. However, if you want to use ColdFusion, it can run on both Linux and Windows platforms.

(3) What are your Space and Bandwidth requirements:
Many web hosting providers nowadays offer generous amounts of disk space from 1 GB to 3 GB. However, if your web site mainly acts as a download resource, then your disk space requirements may be 5 to 10 times greater than this. The second consideration is how much traffic your web site is expected to receive which will let you estimate your bandwidth requirements.

(4) How many Parked Domains and Subdomains do you need:
Parked domains are very advantageous and can significantly increase the amount of traffic to your web site. Similarly, subdomains can help with your search engine rankings by pointing to specific directories of your web site. Parked domains and subdomains occasionally come free with certain web hosting packages. However if you need more, you will have to pay an additional price per month.

(5) FTP Accounts and Anonymous FTP Requirements:
You may need more than one FTP account if you have coworkers working on your web site project at different locations. The Anonymous FTP permits the general public to access certain directories on your web server to whom they have been granted permission by you. In most cases, you will need a dedicated IP address for Anonymous FTP to function.

(6) Whether you need e-commerce Features:
If you need e-commerce features, you should choose a web hosting provider that provides e-commerce functionality such as shopping carts and the ability to accept credit cards. You should also check whether their server is SSL secure.

In addition to your own hosting requirements, the following considerations must be kept in mind when looking for a quality web hosting provider.

(1) More than 99.5% uptime:
Choose a web hosting provider that has an uptime greater than 99.5% and if there is an uptime guarantee, it's even better. If your web site is for business purposes, it's very crucial that your site stays online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year.

(2) Fast Servers:
The level of connectivity of your web hosting provider to the Internet is very important. So you should choose a web hosting provider with at least a T3 connection to the major Internet backbone. Analysis has shown that the average web visitor waits for about 30 seconds before your web page loads. So if your web site takes more than 30 seconds to load, chances are that you will loose a lot of visitors and consequently sales.

(3) Server Backups:
To make your data secure, your web hosting provider must have a power backup system and should backup the data to an external device in order to prevent the data loss due to failure. Check how frequently the web hosting provider backups the data, i.e. daily or weekly.

(4) Disk Space and Bandwidth:
Choose a web hosting provider that meets your disk space and bandwidth requirements. Most web hosting providers offer 1 GB to 3 GB of disk space, so if your web site is not mainly a download resource, then this factor is not that important for you. However, as regards the bandwidth, it should be as much as possible because your traffic can increase in the future thereby requiring more data transfer. Also check that you have the option of buying more disk space and bandwidth when required.

(5) Unrestricted CGI, SSH, FTP access & Anonymous FTP:
If you have a professional web site, you will need to run CGI scripts, have SSH (Secure Shell) access and FTP access. CGI and FTP access is provided by most web hosting providers whereas SSH access is provided by a few. You may also need to check if anonymous FTP access is provided.

(6) Software/Scripts:
Choose a web hosting provider that has an extensive script library that you can use to add guestbooks, forms, surveys, newsletters etc to your web site.

(7) E-commerce capabilities and SSL:
Choose a web hosting provider that provides you with e-commerce capabilities with shopping cart software and also merchant accounts. The web hosting provider must also have an SSL secure server for safe and risk-free transactions.

(8) Web-Based Administration:
Almost all web hosting providers nowadays provide a control panel to access and manage web site features. Ask for a demo of their control panel if possible and check to make sure that it is simple as well as comprehensive. The control panel should provide access to FTP, e-mail, databases, e-commerce and all other functions for effective web site management. VDeck 2.0 and CPanel are the leading brands of administration control panels.

(9) Full e-mail services:
Choose a web hosting provider that provides both POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts, web-based e-mail, autoresponders, mailing lists, forwarding accounts and antivirus and spam filtering software.

(10) Moneyback Guarantee:
If the Web hosting provider gives a moneyback guarantee, it's even better because it makes you absolutely risk-free.

(11) 24/7/365 Customer Support:
The web hosting provider should provide as many support channels as possible including an FAQ section, a knowledgebase, video and flash tutorials, toll-free support, e-mails support, live chat support and a community forum. Try e-mailing the web host a couple of times to check how quickly they respond to your request. The customer support should be as prompt as possible and should be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. This is crucial because if you run into problems and the support staff is not receptive or knowledgeable, you will be helpless.

Article Source: http://netmlmarticles.com
By: Michael Smith
Michael Smith is an expert web hosting analyst. His site Web Hosting Reviews reviews and rates the leading web hosting providers.

How to Change Web Hosts

It is recommended you start the process at least a few days before the time runs out on the account with your present host. This will keep your website from experiencing any downtime between the move.

The first thing to do, after you have searched and found a new web hosts, is create a backup of your website. Make a new folder somewhere on your computer. Using your favorite FTP program, such as WS_FTP or Cute FTP (these and other FTP programs can be obtained at download.com), download all the files and folders on your website to the new folder you just made on your computer while maintaining the same folder and file structure (this will be important when uploading your files and folders onto your new host's server later). Make a note of any special chmod permissions you have set on any file or folder (look in your FTP program's help documents for information on checking a folder or file's chmod permissions). You will need to reset the permissions after you upload your files and folders to your new web host's server.

If you have any scripts or programs that you made a database for, make a backup of each database. If you have a database other than MySQL, check with your present web host for instructions on backing up your database. If you don't have any databases, you can skip these instructions. If your web host offers phpMyAdmin, log in to your control panel and go to the database section. Look for a link to phpMyAdmin and click on it. If required, log in using the username and password you gave for your database. If you assigned a different username and password for each database, you will have to repeat this process for each database. After you log in, click on "databases" and then click on the database you want to backup/export. Click "Export" on the top menu.

If you are using phpMyAdmin 2.4.0, highlight all the tables under "View dump (schema) of database." Make sure the "Structure and data" radio button is selected. Check "Save as file" and select either "zipped" or "gzipped." Click "Go" and save the file (it would be a good idea to create a new folder in which to save all your databases).

If you are using phpMyAdmin 2.6.0-pl1, highlight all the tables under "Export." Check the "Structure" and "Data" boxes and select "SQL" under the tables you highlighted. Check "Save as file" and under "Compression" select either "zipped" or "gzipped." Click "Go" and save the file. (it would be a good idea to create a new folder in which to save all your databases).
If you don't have phpMyAdmin, you can backup your database using mysqldump.

Next, setup your databases.

If you have MySQL databases, log in to your control panel. Go to the database section and create databases. Also, assign usernames and passwords for the databases (if you have a database other than MySQL, check with your new web host for instructions on creating and importing databases). Now, find the link to phpMyAdmin. If required, log in using the usernames and passwords you just created. If you assigned a different username and password for each database, you will have to repeat this process for each database. After logging in, click on "databases" and select a database by clicking on it. From the top menu, click "SQL."

Go to the folder you saved your databases in and select the database that corresponds to the one you have open in phpMyAdmin. Open the file and copy and paste the database in the large text area in phpMyAdmin. Click "Go" under the text area field. You can also use the browse button to find the file on your computer and click "Go" below the browse field. If you don't see any errors, with whichever method you chose, you have just successfully imported the database. If you have more than one database, go back and repeat this process for each one, starting with logging in with your database username and password. If you don't have phpMyAdmin, you can use this method to create your databases.

You may need to edit some files before uploading them in the next step, by changing MySQL database name, username and password settings within the files, if any information has changed. If you don't remember which files contain MySQL settings, check the installation instructions for each script/program.


Next, upload the files from the folder in which you saved your website content onto the new web host's server, maintaining the same folder and file structure, using your FTP program. The only difference in structure may be the location of the cgi-bin. Some web hosts have your cgi-bin inside the www or public_html directory and some have it placed outside. If you had any programs or scripts on your website, you may need to edit some files by changing paths within them. If you don't remember which files contain paths that may need to be changed, check the installation instructions for each script/program. Also, change any file or folder permissions as needed (look in your FTP program's help documents for information on changing a folder or file's chmod permissions).

The final step is to point your domain name to your new web host's name servers. This information probably came in an email from your new web host soon after you registered with them. If not, send them an email asking them what the name servers are for your domain. Once you have this information, go to the website where you have your domain name registered. Log in to your account and set the name servers for your domain. Please note that changes to name servers may take as much as a couple of days to take effect. If you still have a few days left on your old account, your website shouldn't experience any downtime. Once the name servers change has taken effect, cancel the account with your old host (this is so you don't get charged for another term). That's it. You have successfully switched web hosts.

Article Source: http://netmlmarticles.com
By: Brian Shoemaker
Brian Shoemaker is the owner of the affordable web hosting directory Find-A-Web-Host.com (offering a free script installation when you choose a web host from the directory) with web hosts offering business web hosting like Netfirms.